I feel duped by an electric ireland sales rep into signing contract on my doorstep.

shiftkey

15-9-2013
On last Friday evening an electric ireland sales rep came to my door, and I told him that I was happy with my current gas supplier and that I had no wish to switch. He seemed to accept my statement but went on to tell me a story about new EU competition laws which insist that bord gais and electric ireland have to be more competitive, and as a way of starting this process electric ireland are running a promotional campaign to give all bord gais customers a €25 credit on their bill. Perhaps I was a little naive, (but it was Friday evening and I had not had my dinner at that point), so I decided to sign the form which he presented to me. Later after I had my dinner I had a closer look at the two sheet copy of the form and to my surprise and shock, I found that I had signed an agreement to switch my gas supplier to electric ireland. I believe that in order to build his sales figures your field rep had grossly misrepresented what he was offering/asking me to sign.
Please advise me as a matter of urgency how I can cancel my agreement, which I believe it is my right to do, under the consumers rights bill.?
Thank you.

vicwatson

Relax, contact them, you have at least a 7 day cooling off period (I infact think its 14 days), so don't worry

shiftkey

I guess your right vic, thanks for being the voice of reason & calm! :-).
But I am still expecting a reply from the 'electric ireland' team on boards.ie.

EI: Una

Hi Shiftkey,

We are sorry to read you are unhappy with your customer experience. We will address this for you right away if you send us a private message with the relevant particulars of the form and your name/address.

We see you have already sent us a private message outlining the details of your query, we just require a second one confirming all of the above, thanks.

Regards,
Una

tero

shiftkey wrote: »

15-9-2013
On last Friday evening an electric ireland sales rep came to my door, and I told him that I was happy with my current gas supplier and that I had no wish to switch. He seemed to accept my statement but went on to tell me a story about new EU competition laws which insist that bord gais and electric ireland have to be more competitive, and as a way of starting this process electric ireland are running a promotional campaign to give all bord gais customers a €25 credit on their bill. Perhaps I was a little naive, (but it was Friday evening and I had not had my dinner at that point), so I decided to sign the form which he presented to me. Later after I had my dinner I had a closer look at the two sheet copy of the form and to my surprise and shock, I found that I had signed an agreement to switch my gas supplier to electric ireland. I believe that in order to build his sales figures your field rep had grossly misrepresented what he was offering/asking me to sign.
Please advise me as a matter of urgency how I can cancel my agreement, which I believe it is my right to do, under the consumers rights bill.?
Thank you.

Same thing more or less happend to myself and my partner,this guy made a simular pitch which was because we were loyal customers to both companies we were being given 6% off both our bills.As I had told him as soon as I opened the door we were happy with our suppliers he went on as if that was not his reason to call it was just to reward customers.Maybe a bit naive as I even said "you dont get many people calling to your door to give you something" and I complained to him about cold callers trying to get us to change suppliers he nodded as if to agree.He got my husband to sign a form but did not leave a copy and he read both meters and we were blissfully unaware till we received a letter and final bill from bord  gais yesterday saying they were sorry to lose us as customers.I am really annoyed as he was very shrewd and he knew we didnt know what was really going on.We have been in touch with bord gais and electric ireland ,still waiting to hear back,but its well past 14 days but we have not cooled off and this is not the end of it.So beware of a ginger guy with glasses bringing good news.  

EI: Una

Hi tero,

Sorry to read this. If you would like us here on Boards to also check your account, do feel free to private message us.

We are here until 6pm.

Kind regards,
Una

tero

Electric Ireland: Una wrote: »

Hi tero,

Sorry to read this. If you would like us here on Boards to also check your account, do feel free to private message us.

We are here until 6pm.

Kind regards,
Una

We have now received an email saying we are registered since the 13 november and they want 50 euro to go back to our original supplier ,which we do not have and we cant phone as we dont have a landline and its pointless ringing on a mobile as we would run out of credit in a minute or two.I am feeling very stressed and I suffer from anxiety and depression, I have also requested call backs to no avail.I have no details to give as we were not left a copy of this agreement.I cant believe how badly Electric Ireland are treating us maybe we should just wipe the slate clean and go with bord gais for our electric too.  

EI: Aoife O

Hi tero,

I understand your concern and I sincerely apologise for this. If you can please PM us with your full name, MPRN and contact number I'll look into this for you right away. I appreciate that you were hesitant to call our Service line because of the cost, but I can confirm that Electric Ireland take over the price of the call after one minute. If it was not your intention to switch to Electric Ireland then we can certainly cancel your switch and you will not be liable for an exit fee.

Kind regards,
Aoife

shiftkey

Hi all,
Can I just add a footnote to my original posting which started off this thread? And that is, that my issue was promptly dealt with by the Electric Ireland reps on boards.ie and was concluded to my complete satisfaction.
Thank you all, yo do a great job on the rock-face of complaints. 
Keep up the great work,

Regards,
Shiftkey.